5 January 2018: The inaugural meeting of the Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land Use and Energy (FABLE) Consortium took place the 6-8 December 2017, in Vienna, Austria. Among other actions, Consortium members will seek to develop national pathways towards sustainable land-use and food systems that are consistent with global objectives, such as keeping the rise of average temperatures to well below 2°C.

The overall objective of the FABLE Consortium is to facilitate consistent global and national pathways towards sustainable land-use and food systems by 2050 through the development of integrated modeling tools covering agriculture, bioenergy, food security, diets, water, biodiversity, and other critical dimensions of food and land-use systems. The Consortium is coordinated by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), and the EAT Foundation. It currently comprises 13 country and regional teams from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Russian Federation, Rwanda, South Africa and the US.

With technical support from international research organizations, such as IIASA and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Consortium members will undertake country- and region-specific analyses aimed at understanding how international commitments relating to land-use and food systems can be achieved at national and international levels. The proposed studies will also assess international spillover effects to help countries determine the impact of their policies on other countries and to anticipate impacts on their land-use and food systems that may emanate from developments in other countries.

The FABLE Consortium operates as part of the broader Food and Land-Use Coalition to provide the integrated analysis that can support relevant stakeholders in undertaking the deep transformations needed to achieve sustainable land-use and food systems. [SDSN Press Release]